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Supervolcano

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As you might guess from the title, the film revolves around a super volcano  in this case, the Yellowstone caldera that lies just underneath Yellowstone National Park. Geologist Rick Lieberman and his team of scientists in the park monitor the increasingly worrisome signs of an impending eruption, while pressure mounts from the media and Rick's own brother-in-law. When the caldera finally erupts, it proves to be a devastating eruption, and the film then focuses on the federal government's response as well as that of the public to this catastrophe.

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This film provides examples of:

Anyone Can Die: Besides the countless people who die in the eruption off-screen, a lot of the main cast dies as well.

Advancing Wall of Doom: The first vent undergoing a column collapse triggers a massive wave of pyroclastic flows which absolutely obliterate everything they touch and kill Nancy and Matt when they try to flee the scene in their vehicle.

Apocalypse How: The eruption itself is a regional disaster, but the volcanic winter scales things up to a global societal disruption.

Apocalyptic Log: The movie begins with one made by Rick being discovered. Subverted as Rick himself is the one who finds it.

Bittersweet Ending: Rick, Jock, Johnson, and Kenneth survive the eruption, and ultimately Rick's suggestion of "Walk to Life" saves 7.3 million people. However, the eruption has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, wreaked havoc on the entire global ecosystem, rendered 20% of the United States uninhabitable, and caused mass famine and a volcanic winter.

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Chekhov's Volcano: Double Subverted. The Yellowstone Caldera isn't as visible as your average volcano, but it's the setting of most of the first half. The threat it poses is built up for the entire time and the eruption lasts for days on end.

Endless Winter: The sulfur gasses expelled by the eruption cause a volcanic winter that lasts for years. One of Jock's interview segments after the fact has him saying that things are starting to get better, but probably won't be back to normal within his lifetime.

Fire-Forged Friends: Rick and his brother-in-law Kenneth become much closer after their experience surviving the eruption.

Glory Hound: The reason Maggie Chin is investigating Yellowstone. Matt tries to talk her out of it.

Holographic Terminal: Virgil, the modeling computer they use to look at the magma chamber, uses one to display results.

Idiot Ball: Dave completely forgets about the potential for ash piling up on a roof and collapsing it. He dies cursing himself for forgetting about it.note Or, alternatively, he realized that as close as he was to the eruption he wouldn't be able to escape and chose to prioritize monitoring the status of the eruption over his own safety.

Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: Kenneth demonstrates the size of a full-scale Yellowstone eruption by going up the Volcanic Explosivity Index from Mt. St. Helensnote VEI 5 with proportionately-sized cubes.

Know When to Fold 'Em: Subverted. Maggie gives up on covering Yellowstone on-site when Matt makes her aware of just how big an eruption would be and instead starts covering the government's response.

Lurid Tales of Doom: What Rick thinks Kenneth is doing. Turns out Kenneth wasn't too far off, though neither of them had any way of knowing it at the time.

Mass "Oh, Crap!": Once the public finds out about the possibility of an eruption, stores are cleaned out by panicking civilians, and it's not limited to the US. The panic has already spread to the UK by the day after Rick's wife and son get there.

No Antagonist: Joe Foster is the closest thing to an antagonist and the governor follows along with him, but they both act more reasonably when the chips are down.

No Man Left Behind: Kenneth suggests waiting for Johnson's comrades to come searching for him for their rescue. Johnson, a member of the Air Force, claims that the No Man Left Behind trope is only invoked by the Army Rangers.

No Party Like a Donner Party: Jokingly discussed when Kenneth proposes that he and Rick eat Johnson to survive. Johnson smirks and accepts the challenge.

Obnoxious In-Laws: How Rick sees Kenneth at first, partly because Kenneth's sensationalism has been making Rick's job harder.

Obstructive Bureaucrat: Joe Foster, director of Homeland Security, outright asks Rick to lie about the eruption, and when Rick says there's a possibility that the worst case scenario will happen, Joe throws it back in his face by demanding Rick make a statement playing it down. Even when the eruption starts, Joe arrogantly refuses to listen to Rick until there seems to be no hope. However, it's made clear that his choice is in part based on concern that if the full danger's known the resulting panic will ultimately increase the lives lost in the disaster.

Oh, Crap!: Once when the anomaly above the magma chamber is revealed to be a magma pocket approaching the surface, again when the plane flies into the ash cloud and again when a second vent opens up as that means it'll chain-react into a caldera-forming eruption.

The remainder of the team at the field office have a giant one when they realise that Yellowstone's finally gone off. Even the skeptical Jock realises what's happened and let's out a horrified "This isn't mud. It's started."

Outrun the Fireball: Technically it's a pyroclastic flow, but otherwise the trope is intact when Jock, Nancy and Matt flee the incoming pyroclastic flow. They don't survive, sadly.

Jock manages to outfly the flow in a helicopter by telling the pilot to keep going up as they fly away from the eruption.

Reasonable Authority Figure: The governor of Wyoming is a pretty reasonable guy when it comes down to it, and listens to Rick and his team, acknowledging that he's a politician, not a scientist. Wendy and Michael Eldridge also qualify.

Joe Foster, who was initially the most unreasonable, is the first one to hit the ground running when it all hits the fan.

"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Matt gives one to Maggie for trying to cover the eruption for her own personal fame. He makes it absolutely clear that if she tries to film the eruption, she will be killed by it.

Shown Their Work: This work started out as a 2002 BBC non-fiction science documentary. It's notable for both the accuracy of the depiction of the disaster, and the response to it.

Small Name, Big Ego: The reporter who constantly harasses Rick's team for information regarding Yellowstone is bent on getting a big scoop and the glory from it. As time goes on, she eventually realizes the gravity of the situation and backs down after a harrowing tour of the caldera... only to focus on the government's response to the impending eruption instead.

Nancy: Fifteen hundred cubic kilometers of melt.note As in 1500km^3 of magma ready to blow, which is a lot.

Wham Shot: The final shot of the film is a series of satellite images of the United States, each encompassing more area than the last. The final one reveals the gargantuan new caldera formed by the eruption as well as revealing that the eruption has buried the entire western half of the United States in ash.

Before that, Jock, Nancy and Matt are rightfully horrified when they notice the pyroclastic flow starting just as they're to flee Yellowstone.

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